Fuel economy a welcome surprise on new Jaguar XJ

2013 Jaguar XJ 3.0 AWD

PHOTO: Brian Harper, National Post

By David Booth, Postmedia News

Originally published: February 28, 2013

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As Brian Harper so eloquently details in his review, Jaguar’s new AWD version of its flagship XJ pushes all the right buttons. The automaker’s Instinctive All-Wheel Drive adds winter credibility to the big XJ’s portfolio, the styling is still saucy, and the new 3.0-litre supercharged V6, despite being nothing more than the V8 with two pistons lopped off, is both fast and sophisticated. A job well done, then, though one expects no less from the storied brand, especially for the $89,000 Jaguar Canada wants for its base model.

But what I, for one, didn’t expect was the incredible fuel economy my big tester achieved on my bi-monthly trek to Ottawa. Cruising at 120 kilometres an hour, my 400-kilometre trip ended with the Jag’s digital readout claiming 7.7 L/100 km. That’s pretty impressive stuff, all the more so when you consider that my test unit was a stretched wheelbase XJ-L, the largest beast in Jaguar’s lineup. Further impressive is that those 7.7 litres compare well with the 7.6 L/100 km that I recorded in Audi’s similarly-motored-but-a-segment-smaller A7 (virtually the same as a Ford C-Max Hybrid). But, in the end, perhaps the most impressive thing is that my Jag actually beat Natural Resource Canada’s official 8.1 L/100 km rating, an incredible feat considering that NRCan’s testing is performed at an average speed of 77 km/h and I was cruising at a more-realistic-but-still-getting-passed 120 km/h.

In town, the big Jag was substantially less frugal, averaging about 14 L/100 km. But that’s not sufficiently more profligate than its 13.2 L/100 km rating. Indeed, my overall 10.2 L/100 km consumption is quite stellar for real-world consumption considering that this big Jag is fit for royalty and only slightly smaller than an ocean liner. One has to credit the XJ’s sleek, coupe-like aerodynamics for that exemplary highway consumption and lightweight aluminum construction for the not-so-shabby urban fuel economy. It is, for instance, worth noting that the XJ-L is 283 millimetres longer than the A7 I compared it to while being 19 kilograms lighter, making its comparable numbers all the more impressive.